Obama tells Dem donors to ‘chill out’
‘The choice is so stark and the stakes are so high that you cannot afford to be ambivalent,’ ex-prez says in Silicon Valley
LOS ALTOS HILLS » Former President Barack Obama Thursday urged Democrats to “chill out” when squabbles erupt among the party’s presidential hopefuls and avoid getting distracted by acrimonious policy debates.
“Everybody needs to chill out about the candidates,” Obama told about 100 donors who had paid thousands of dollars to hear him talk at a fundraiser in the wealthy South Bay enclave. “But gin up about the prospect of rallying behind whoever emerges
from this process and making sure we’re hitting the ground running.”
If voters don’t think the eventual Democratic nominee is a “perfect” candidate who agrees with them on everything, “I don’t care,” the former president declared. “The choice is so stark and the stakes are so high that you cannot afford to be ambivalent in this race.”
The blunt warning was the second time in two weeks that Obama, who remains one of the Democratic Party’s most influential voices, has weighed in on the 2020 race — as the contest among the contenders vying for the office he once occupied grows increasingly heated.
Speaking in a woodpaneled living room with sweeping views of the hills above Silicon Valley — a few hours after discussing the influence of technology at a San Francisco conference — Obama argued that disagreements among the Democrats pale in comparison to the gap between them and President Donald Trump.
His successor, he said, has “taken a sharp turn away from a lot of the core traditions and values and institutional commitments that built this country.”
And he urged the party’s standard-bearers to reach out to voters who might not be in the typical Democratic base.
“We are not going to win just by increasing the turnout of people who already agree with us completely on everything, which is why I’m always suspicious of purity tests during elections,” he said. “You know what? The country’s complicated.”
The president, who wore a navy suit and blue shirt with no tie, seemed relaxed as he cracked jokes in front of the friendly crowd.
Among the attendees was Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry — standing a head above many of the other donors — whom Obama shouted out to make a point about politics.
The Warriors have “won a lot of championships” but they only got there after years of improvement, he said, comparing their rise to how he and other political candidates grew thanks to going through tough primary campaigns.
“I got knocked around pretty good” in his own competitive primary in 2007 and 2008, Obama remembered.
Speaking in conversation with DNC Chairman Tom Perez, Obama preached party unity less than 24 hours after the 2020 presidential contenders clashed at Wednesday night’s debate.
Debates over which health care plan or which climate change plan to support “are good arguments to have, but you have to win the election,” Obama said. “The main thing is to actually achieve majorities that allow us to move these things forward.”
The former president first waded into the debate over the primary in a speech at another Washington, D.C., fundraiser last week, where he warned the candidates not to stake out positions too far to the left.
“The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it,” Obama said then, arguing that the nominee could be in danger of losing the general election if he or she goes too far catering to “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds.”
That came off to some as an implicit critique of candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who’ve argued for sweeping changes to the U.S. economy and government like “Medicare for All.”
At the debate Wednesday, Sanders responded to Obama’s comment, saying that voters wanted a candidate who would fix the health care system and take on insurance companies.
“We don’t have to tear down the system, but we do have to do what the American people want,” Sanders said. “And the American people understand today that the current health care system is not only cruel, it is dysfunctional.”
The event Thursday was hosted at the home of psychiatrist Karla Jurvetson, who has become one of the biggest Democratic donors in Silicon Valley.
Tickets ranged from $10,000 to get into the event to $35,000 for a photo with Obama to an eye-popping $355,000 for a VIP reception and a premium convention package, according to an invitation. The fundraiser was expected to bring in several million dollars for the party’s Unity Fund to support the eventual nominee.
That would be a big boost for the committee, which has struggled to keep up with its GOP counterpart. New reports released this week showed the DNC raised just over $9 million last month, but the Republican National Committee raised about $25.3 million in the same period.
Attendees at the fundraiser included former state Controller Steve Westly, former Twitter executive Katie Jacobs Stanton and Democratic donor and tech exec Amy Rao.
Obama thanked his longtime Bay Area supporters, many of whom, he joked, had supported him “when I had no gray hair.”
Many of the former president’s fans showed up for another talk he gave earlier Thursday morning at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference in San Francisco, during which Obama warned about how technology had fanned political polarization and inequality.
In a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, he said that that technology allowed them both to be successful — Obama’s was the first presidential campaign to take advantage of social media — but also has led to political turmoil.
“Part of solving big problems is not just finding a technical solution,” he said in the hourlong talk at Moscone Center before a crowd of about 7,500 that included San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Salesforce employees and some very excited schoolchildren who got front-row seats and shook Obama’s hand after the speech. “It’s about finding common values.”
“Right now in our culture, fed in part by social media and technology, we’re chasing the wrong things,” Obama said.
The former president’s comments come as the tech industry is coming to terms with the consequences of its power, especially after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which Russian operatives tried to sway Americans’ votes by spreading falsehoods on social media.
“During the rise of a new information age — whether it’s the printing press, radio, TV and now social media and the internet — it can be a dangerous moment,” Obama said. “People don’t know what’s true and what’s not.”